1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a system and method to observe user behavior and perform actions on introspectable objects. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for generating deduced rules using logged backend events and corresponding user actions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Enterprise administration becomes more and more complex as the enterprise being administered increases in size. An enterprise may include a multitude of components such as machines, drivers, applications, services, and processes. Each of these components may be designed to interface with a particular management system or console, which results in an overwhelming administration task. In an effort to alleviate some of the complexity of managing an enterprise, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) introduced the Common Information Model (CIM) to standardize the representation of these components. The CIM model allows a user to describe a component in a manner that is not bound to a particular implementation or platform.
With the multitude of components that an enterprise may include, a user may wish to analyze the enterprise using particular views. For example, a user may wish to view the enterprise in a topology tree structure which first sorts the machines, based upon clusters, and then into subnets. Once the user's console renders a requested view, the user monitors the view for backend events, such as “server down.” When the user notices a backend event, the user issues a user action, such as “restart server.” A challenge found, however, when a rendered view supports a plurality of heterogeneous backends, is the difficulty in generalizing the enterprise's behavior across a multitude of related components (e.g. machines), which may be in different subnets and clusters.
Furthermore, a user typically performs the same user action when the user receives the same backend event. For example, the user may perform a “restart server” each time the user notices a “server down” backend event. A challenge found, however, is automating user actions in response to receiving events that are generated at heterogeneous, and possibly numerous, backends that correspond to a navigation tree's imposed hierarchy in which the hierarchy may be hardcoded or softwired through the use of a descriptive model. Softwires abstract physically unrelated and unconnected objects into logical node trees, peer nodes, and peer trees, such that common events, rules, and actions are defined. In turn, multi-component command requests are processed based upon a particular rendered view.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method to automatically perform actions in response to receiving backend events from heterogeneous backend environments.